By JAMES EDWARD TALMAGE

LONG before the first settlement, little more than fifty years ago, of the valley of the Great Salt Lake, strange stories of the briny sea and its desert setting had found their way to the civilized and cultured East; and, mingled with the weird accounts of sun-baked plains, waterless wilderness, and saline solitudes, were the predictions of the wise that the country would never be worth settling. This region was included within the area against which Daniel Webster hurled his anathema of denunciation from the floor of the national Senate, proclaiming the utter worthlessness of the great West, and declaring that he would "never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston" than it then was. And concerning the Salt Lake Valley itself, Colonel James Bridger, for whom the disputed honor of discovering the Great Salt Lake has been claimed, said that he would offer a thousand dollars in gold for the first ear of corn that could be ripened therein.

The motive spirit actuating the early travellers in these then Mexican wastes was that of exploration and discovery. Worthy as it was, it was insufficient to induce the settlement of the wilderness or to inspire the ambition of subduing the desert and sanctifying the waste places with the name of home. The most potent of all incentives, that of religious conviction and conscientious devotion to what was regarded as sacred duty, was necessary—and not wanting.

It was on the 19th of July, 1847, that the vanguard of the pioneer party of "Mormon" colonists sighted the valley of the Great Salt Lake. For long, weary months they had journeyed; their start from the frontiers of civilization had been hastened by the musket and the sword and the devouring flame of persecution; their course over plain and mountain had been attended by vicissitudes that only those who have toiled through such journeys can comprehend.

[ PAVILION OF SALTAIR, GREAT SALT LAKE.]

And what emotions did that first view of the "Promised Land" inspire! A valley, beautiful it is true, even as the desert is beautiful in its parching splendor; as the mountains are beautiful in their terrible grandeur; as the ocean is beautiful in its calm monotony or in its storm-lashed fury; but such beauty is not suggestive of rest or peace, and it was peace the wanderers sought. From the cañons of the Wasatch, though not the first to traverse the region, yet the first to brave its desolate and forbidding seclusion in search of a home, they looked down on a valley walled by the Wasatch and the Oquirrhs, bare of tree or shrub, except for patches of chaparral oak, and here and there a gnarled willow or cottonwood bravely struggling for existence on the upper parts of the few stream courses that opened from the mountain wall on the east; the only blossoms those of the stunted sunflower and its desert companions, the foliage that of the gray artemisia, or wild sage.

BRIGHAM YOUNG. FOUNDER OF SALT LAKE CITY.

On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young, the founder of Salt Lake City and the pioneer colonizer of Utah, descended from the mountain gateway, followed by the main division of the company, numbering a hundred and forty and four souls, of whom three were women. One of this trio of heroines was overcome by the treeless and desolate aspect of the valley. "Weak and weary as I am," she said, "I would rather go a thousand miles farther than stop in this forsaken place." Three days earlier an advance detachment, including Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, each of whom came to be known as a prominent apostle of the "Mormon" Church, had entered the valley; but July 24th is regarded as the first day of occupation, and each recurrence of the date is observed as Pioneer Day, a holiday by law established in the State of Utah.